The 2026-27 NBA season is just a couple of months away from tipping off, and on Thursday, the league unveiled the full regular-season schedule. The season tips off at 3 p.m. ET on Oct. 20, when the Celtics and Pistons face off in a match-up of the East's top two teams last season.
Opening Day continues with the 76ers in New York to face the reigning champion Knicks at 7 p.m., followed by a Thunder-Spurs nightcap at 9:30 p.m. Christmas Day will feature its typical five marquee games, including a 2026 Finals rematch between the Knicks and Spurs and LeBron James' return to the Lakers. Despite the schedule makers having to wait on James' lengthy free agency before finalizing the schedule, the league was able to coordinate 82 games for all 30 teams by its traditional mid-August deadline.
Once James chose the Philadelphia 76ers, all the pieces could fall into place for the league's marquee dates and national television schedule. Predictably, Philadelphia is strongly featured. From a broad perspective, the 2026-27 season will be headlined by the New York Knicks defending their first title since 1973 against a suddenly loaded crop of Eastern Conference contenders.
In the West, the biggest question is whether anyone can prevent another collision course between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the San Antonio Spurs in the conference finals. That'll all get settled across the 1,230 regular-season games on the schedule, but within the marathon that is the NBA's regular season, there are some key dates for NBA fans to circle on their calendars. The opening night festivities will begin on Oct. 20 with the Knicks raising their first championship banner at Madison Square Garden in more than 50 years.
The Garden will be loud as the Knicks get their championship rings as the final official celebration of their landmark championship, and then they'll kick the season off with a showdown against the 76ers, which includes LeBron James and Jaylen Brown making their Sixers debuts. The best rivalry in the league right now is between the two top teams in the West, and they'll close out the opening night festivities on Oct. 20 at 9:30 p.m. They met in a thrilling Western Conference Finals series last year, when Wembanyama's Spurs took down the defending champs to continue San Antonio's domination of Oklahoma City from the regular season.
That series was largely played with Thunder star Jalen Williams sidelined, and he, along with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Chet Holmgren, will be looking to re-establish themselves as the West's team to beat over the course of their four games with the Spurs next year. Holmgren in particular has been a target of Wembanyama's since the French star entered the league, and Holmgren has plenty to prove in this matchup after a brutal conference finals showing. Cleveland Cavaliers fans were fully convinced James was going to come back home to end his career, but he instead chose Philadelphia in a fairly stunning twist for his final free agency decision.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
